Joshua Guffey

Posts Tagged ‘filters’

A while back I wrote a post entitled “Don’t follow us on Twitter” that was intended to get a conversation going about how we use Twitter, whom we follow & how we make that choice. I got several comments that helped me to view this topic more broadly. Thanks to those who commented.

I’ve got another thought for you on the topic of whom we follow on Twitter, and it’s thanks to my conversations with you.

It occurs to me that this is a very individual decision. People engage on Twitter for a spectrum of reasons ranging from purely personal to strictly business; it looks different for everyone.  Some just drop links from their blog. Others exclusively use Twitter to engage in casual conversations.  Many share links to things that are happening in their areas of interest or in their industry.  And a few of us have begun contacting companies for quick feedback and questions about their services.

The uses for Twitter are as varied as those using it. And your purpose for engaging on the service certainly dictates the manner in which you use it.

All of this also leaves out the manner in which you filter tweets, if at all.

Obviously, as your network increases in size with active twitterers, your stream will grow. If you are using Twitter for more than casual conversations (and even if you aren’t) you may want to employ some type of filtering so that you can focus on one group of connections at a time.

There are many ways to filter incoming tweets and as you ‘get bigger’ the methods you employ must naturally scale to enable you to continue to function at a high level. (if that is your goal)

You could choose to follow liberally and ‘see what shows up’ on your Twitter stream; or you could choose not to follow anyone but instead to use lists, groups or third-party services to engage where the action and interest is for you.  Most people will likely find their own follow style somewhere in the middle of these extremes.

Regarding this ‘to follow, or not to follow’ dilemma I’d like to share what seems sure to me.  Correct me if I’m wrong.

Three things seem sure to me:

1. That there’s no “right” way to make this choice; we all make it our own way.
2. You shouldn’t feel obligated to ‘follow back’ just because someone followed you.
3. And that “your way” may likely change over time, as all things do.

So go forth!  Follow who you will.  And don’t let anyone tell you you’re doing it wrong; least of all me.

What’s your follow style? Leave me a comment and let me know.

For more about Twitter and ways to filter the incoming data stream that is today’s web, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to this blog

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photo credit: Wallula Junction

We’re all very well connected these days. That’s good! But without some specialized filters the real-time web and social media can certainly start to take over our lives.

I recently posted a screencast about how Syphir can make Gmail more manageable and powerful.  Now I want to show you how you can use Syphir to delay your Facebook comments from showing up in your Gmail inbox until you’re ready for them.

Take a look at the screenshot below to see what the filters rules and actions are. Then head over to Syphir and create your own filters to manage web-overload.

Building on Gmail’s recent app platform, Syphir allows you to create filters that just aren’t available in standard Gmail; such as an ability to delay emails until a later time.  It’s not perfect but it’s worth a serious look.

I’m just playing with a basic filter right now that delays all incoming email from 11pm to 7am.  It’s an attempt at empowering myself to sleep more and geek less.  (Or at least to geek during daytime hours.)

You can also combine filter rules to have email containing certain words or from certain senders to be delayed until a later time.  For example you could have all Facebook email delayed until 2pm and then respond to all of it at that time. (Remind me to do that!)

Watch the screencast below to get a sense for how powerful Syphir is already, and then consider that they’ve only just begun.

View this screencast on iPhone here: iPhone version

For updates about more ways to filter the incoming data stream that is today’s web, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to this blog

So I was thinking today that I’d really like the ability to tag my tweeps. I mean seperately from how lists work. In fact, sort of backward from how lists work.

Here’s what I mean:
I recently followed a mobile app developer. I know because he has it listed on his Twitter bio. But what about in three months when I realize I need to talk with a mobile app developer?

I’m not going to look at everyone’s profile whom I follow. And if he isn’t very active on Twitter or on at different times than I am, I may not really have him on my radar.

I don’t have other mobile app developers that I follow so I’m not going to create and manage a list for just one person.

So how do I find him?

I could tweet to ask if there are any, but he may not see it.

I could search all of Twitter for people with ‘mobile app’ in their bio, but what if I really liked his approach and specifically want to try to work with this guy? Besides, it’s possible that he’s changed his bio.

What I’d like is the ability to assign free form tags to any tweep I follow. Tags are different than lists so I’d get a different type of value from them. Tags are more flexible and have a lower maintainence cost. (I don’t know if this is an established term but it fits).

I want to tag tweeps more freely than I feel compelled to use lists. Lists seem cumbersome. Heavy. If you use Tweetie for iPhone, you feel this when you go to view your lists; they take a looong time to be retrieved from the server.

Perhaps tags wouldn’t be much different in this regard, but certainly they’d add a flexibility that I’m just not feeling with lists.

Are there already third-party solutions for this that I don’t know about?

Would you use this feature if Twitter added it? Your thoughts?

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Photo credit: pumpkincat210

Twitter has lists & hashtags. That’s fine.
Facebook has lists, groups, pages, fine-grain privacy controls and the ability to hide users from our stream. That’s fine.

So what’s the problem??? — Relevance!

Is the data relevant for you in this moment? If you work in the tech world or even (and especially) in the social media space, it’s pretty likely that managing all of your connections  and non-stop, real-time data can be a major undertaking.

Twitter and Facebook have provided us with some basic tools for managing our data streams, but they are still relatively rudimentary and require us to manually categorize our connections by placing them, one-at-a-time into lists or groups of contacts.

I haven’t yet seen anything that goes beyond this level of sophistication for segmenting and filtering out, in real-time, data based on RELEVANCE and not merely upon the source of the data.

Hashtags and Twitter Search begin this process but there are some issues with these tools.

Hashtags are not used by everyone and therefore lose relevance as a tool since important information may not be tagged in a way that brings it to your attention.

An advanced Twitter Search can turn up some pretty relevant data in real-time; and some fancy RSS feed action can make this data more useful, but this tends to cast a wide net and still requires some significant wading to find the data that is most relevant for you. You can build some very specific searches that turn up more targeted data but this also typically filters out some terms you may not have thought of and ends up in a multitude of Twitter search RSS feeds to manage.

If this all sounds like a hell of a lot of work…that’s because it is.

As more of the world adopts Twitter, Buzz and other real-time data sharing technologies, we will have more people connecting with us, and hence, a bigger challenge then we’ve ever seen in trying to read more of what helps move us to forward and less of what doesn’t.

Social media isn’t going away. So how can we stay on top of our game? Well right now you can geek out and plug some Twitter search feeds into Google Reader and you’ll find your reader full of interesting things.  But it takes a special type of geek to even consider playing around with this level of “real-time, data-piping architecture”.

So what do the rest of us do?
I have a few ideas that may help moving forward.

Redundant tweet filtration

It’s my guess if you’ve read this far, that you know a lot of people on Twitter, many of which re-tweet and share the same articles. How many times do you really need to read a tweet about Google’s new policy change? Tweets that share the same links or information could be filtered out or downplayed to make room for unique information.

Real-time tweet relevance filtration

Google certainly has the advantage in this area.  In fact this technology is already in place in Google’s own search engine in the form of suggested search queries.  And even more robustly in the keyword selection tool for their ad network, Google Adwords.

The system knows what words and phrases are generally synonymous or in some way related. On Google.com the technology returns the most popular search terms based on the search habits of entire populations.  Imagine though if your tweet stream (tweets from those you follow) were filtered by relevance to your interests and even the specifics of your current project.  This reality isn’t far for Google.

Better collaborative spam filtration

Perhaps unfortunately for Twitter, Google has a clear lead here again. Gmail has provided a surprisingly spam resistant email experience based upon the ability to block spam message across the entire network given the input of the community it serves, Gmail users.

Yet over at Twitter, auto DMs haunt Twitter like an over-friendly neighbor with bad hygiene. Much of it outright offensive spam that has NO basis on any relationship with you or specific interest of yours as a prospective customer. [dramatic rant]

Google has always been about relevance and “organizing the world’s information”.   Given their ability to provide content in a relevance-centric fashion, I see potential for Google to truly move into social media in an even bigger way in the coming future when there is a potential for more noise in the social space.

Written by Joshua Guffey.  You can follow me on Twitter: @JoshuaGuffey

What do you have to say about this?
How else can we mere mortals manage to keep up with the increasing influx of information?  How  do you think the playing field will change in the next 6-12 months?